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| James DeMile, on the left front row |
Sijo James DeMile, a martial arts icon with a devoted following, and has come to Michigan since 1984 and has conducted over two dozen seminars and camps, eighteen of those, right here at Ambrose Academy. He continues to demonstrate why he is one of the most intelligent minds in self-defense. Students pull out their notebooks or turn on tape recorders to capture the immense information he shares at these seminars.
DeMile was a fighter, always in survival mode in his youth. So he knows about self-defense. In Seattle, Washington, he met someone that changed his life and gave him a whole new perspective on what self-defense was. DeMile at the beginning of most of his seminars sets out to define what is a martial art and what is self-defense.
DeMile can speak with authority because he was present at the birth of a new type of martial art training in America. DeMile is among the original group of students of the legendary Bruce Lee, the martial arts icon who through his many movies, transformed how the world looks at martial arts today. Bruce Lee exploded onto the screen and the martial arts industry spread throughout the United States with the same velocity and ferocity that Bruce Lee exhibited in his movies. He brought martial arts into the 20th century and into the American pop culture.
But few could ever imagine that he was already transforming the martial arts years before he became a martial arts movie icon. Even Bruce could not have been aware of the changes he set in motion when he first came to America and started teaching martial arts and training his way. By revolutionizing the way martial arts was taught and how it was learned, he transformed martial arts from the traditional mindset to an every evolving and modern approach to self-defense.
How did Bruce start the revolution?
It may have already started when Bruce Lee was a student of Yip Man, the man solely responsible for keeping Wing Chun, the very efficient and practical martial art alive. Yip Man bucked tradition when he began teaching Wing Chun to the masses. Before, tradition dictated that a martial art be passed on from family member to clan member or to only a few carefully selected disciples.
Bruce himself was not traditional by any means. He refused to adhere to tradition of respect of elders when it came to the senior students at Yip Man’s school. When Bruce determined or felt he was already better than his senior upper classmen, he no longer minded them and wanted only to train with Yip Man.
When Bruce came to the United States, he did something that really went against tradition. He was one of the first to teach non-Chinese students. He gathered around him a group of men that came from all backgrounds and ethnicities. He broke not only the norms of traditional Chinese social acceptance, but also American social norms of segregation. In 1959, at the age of 18 years old, he was a pioneer.
Bruce Lee began modifying martial art techniques; determine what were really useful, following three precepts taken from traditional Wing Chun: Simplicity, Efficiency, and Practicality.
What was truly efficient, effective technique? How practical was the technique? What is the simplest way to achieve efficiency and practical technique? What made the technique highly effective?
He had to modify the way he thought about martial arts and its effectiveness because of the men he chose to train with in Seattle between 1959-1964. These American friends were much larger in height and weight. They were seasoned fighters from all types of backgrounds and possessed the aggressiveness and tenacity that he needed to help formulate his way of fighting. The Seattle group included black belts in Judo, boxing champions, highly aggressive street fighters, seasoned bar brawlers and other martial artists all very enthusiastic for the chance to learn kung fu from Bruce Lee, and eventually trying with all their might to hit Lee, but to no avail.
Bruce Lee discarded techniques that did not work. He decided that forms were too constricting to the mind. He believed in a more free form expression of technique. He became the “John Coltrane of martial arts.” Even today, many “traditional” martial arts retain certain techniques that admittedly do not work or are not very practical, but those techniques must still be practiced and retained because tradition must be preserved at all costs and the art never diluted.
Lee modified and experimented until he came up with a self-defense system that made him the best. He wanted to be unbeatable. The next step in his training was to make him stronger, faster, and more explosive. Bruce Lee was one of the first to cross train. He worked with isometrics, weights, and reflex timers. He was an innovator in the use of training equipment - using pads, focus mitts and heavy bags. He transformed his body into a masterpiece of proportion, balance, tensile strength and athleticism.
Bruce Lee had an uncanny ability and understanding of biomechanics. He studied the human body and discovered how to generate power explosively and from a relatively short distance. The recent insights today regarding core strength and fast twitch muscle fiber, Lee understood and developed decades earlier.
He investigated other styles, always looking for insight about technique. He was checking his premises and ideas to reaffirm his dominance and ability to defeat any foe. He had to understand what other people were doing, checking out the weaknesses and strengths in their technique and using it to his advantage. He had the ability to watch any fighter or martial artist and immediately show them how to make their technique work better.
By redefining martial arts under the concepts of practicality, simplicity and efficiency, Bruce Lee moved martial arts into the realm of real self-defense. He was always searching for the truth in techniques, their ability to get him to point A to point B and their capacity to disrupt the opponent’s energy. The truth in biomechanics to generate maximum power with the most efficient use of muscles and energy output and explode it into a target, to read the minute telegraphic signals of an opponent’s energy, to know when the opponent was going to move, their intent to move, thereby beating the opponent before he twitched the next muscle.
Many of these innovations are used in modern martial arts today. Bruce moved martial arts to a whole new level. Much like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky, in their respective fields, Bruce Lee redefined what martial arts is today. He moved it from a traditional dogmatic state to scientific explorations of effective principles and concepts.
He wanted a career in the film industry and was laying the foundation. He learned what looked good on film and the limitations of film when recording his technique, his speed and power. He had to telegraph his technique so that it could be seen. He became a consummate fight coordinator. But what you see on film is only a small portion of Bruce Lee’s knowledge and abilities.
All these innovations were taking place years before he became a movie star. In his quest to be the best, he redefined what martial arts meant to him and to the world. From the age of 18-24 was the time when his philosophy, ability and innovations came together to point the way and propel him to success. His years with the Seattle group allowed him to test and retest his premises. He wasn’t teaching ignorant white belts. He was training and fighting with knowledgeable, seasoned fighters. And they above all people knew superiority and innovation when they saw it. They felt it. This is the ultimate compliment to Bruce Lee’s ability, when the bad asses of the world can’t get enough of what you have to show. They were at the right place, at the right time. The group of friends and students during this period of his life help lay the foundation work and were probably closer to the core of Bruce Lee’s discoveries than anyone really knows or wants to admit.
James DeMile developed Wing Chun Do, DeMile’s definitions and interpretations of what he learned from Bruce Lee. The "Do" at the end of Wing Chun, reflects DeMile's honoring the modifications Bruce Lee made to his art of Wing Chun, thus "the way of Wing Chun."
